Morales and colleagues have performed a prospective descriptive study aimed at determining the incidence of, and risk factors for, postlaparotomy intra-abdominal infection in trauma patients. To accomplish this, the authors selected 21 demographic and perioperative variables and assessed their impact on intra-abdominal infection in 762 patients. Ideally, these results would then enable the trauma surgeon to more readily identify the patient at high risk for postoperative intra-abdominal infection, and thus perhaps to institute some change in his or her practice that would decrease the incidence of this complication or prevent it entirely. However, multivariate statistical analysis revealed that only an ATI greater than 24, multiquadrant contamination, and admission to the ICU were significant predictors of postlaparotomy intra-abdominal infection.